Holy Trinity Churchyard, Bromley Common

Enclosure of Bromley Common took place between 1764 and 1821, shortly after which villas began to be built along the Hastings Road (now the A21) as Bromley developed into a fashionable spa. A Chapel of Ease was proposed to meet the spiritual needs of the growing population of the hamlet at the southern end of the Common and in c.1832 a serious effort was made to raise the necessary funds. The accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 and the work of the Commission for Building New Churches strengthened the Bishop of Rochester's call for a new parish of Bromley Common to be created, separate from Bromley's parish of St Peter and St Paul (q.v.). Agreed in 1838, public subscriptions were then sought and land was purchased from Mr Walters for £100 and Mr George Warde Norman for £50. Norman was a driving force behind the project from 1839 until his death in 1882, and other members of his family followed in his footsteps until recent times. An influential financial writer, merchant banker and Director of the Bank of England from 1821, George Warde Norman was a local dignitary, who live at The Rookery on Bromley Common, now Bromley College of Further and Higher Education. Thomas Hopper, a Rochester architect, was engaged to design the new church and Holy Trinity was completed by 1841, the building faced largely in knapped flint and originally without a tower, choir vestry or apse. It was consecrated in 1842, and the tower was added the same year. In 1884 alterations by the architect C Pemberton Leach replaced much of the tracery with Bath stone and a stunted apse was added in memory of George Warde Norman. A clock and bell were installed in 1907, and windows damaged in WWII were replaced in 1952.

The vicarage is adjacent to the eastern wall of the churchyard and a former church school is now a Nursery School, both reached by a private road off Church Lane. The original boundaries of the churchyard were Vicarage Drive, Church Lane and Hastings Road, and the knapped flint boundary wall was provided by the Norman family; now topped with triangular brick coping stones the wall originally had a flat top. The churchyard was extended in 1883 to the north, and a later extension also to the north in 1914; a holly hedge forms the northern boundary. The churchyard was closed to burials in 1991 except for cremations and burials in existing plots.

There are a number of graves to the Norman family and those who worked for them. These include the memorial in the form of a Celtic-style cross for George Warde Norman and immediate family to the east of the apse. Inside the church is a fine monument to George Herman Norman (d.1855), eldest son of George Warde Norman, who was mortally wounded in the Crimean War; a sculpture by T Gaffin shows a mourning soldier either side of a gravestone. To the north of the church is the railed monument of General Peter Augustus Lautour (d.1866), a colonel of the 3rd King's Own Hussars and a distinguished cavalry officer who fought with the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular Wars at Quatre Bras and Waterloo. There are three WWI graves in the churchyard, two in the care of the War Graves Commission, and a War Memorial to commemorate the dead of both world wars.

The churchyard has mature trees generally grouped in different areas, including two yew trees thought to have been planted in the 1840s, two silver birch and a number of conifers. Among shrubs is a magnolia. Main paths are tarmac, with informal paths among the gravestones.